F35 is not a camera aperture ...

According to Reuters recently, Singapore plans to buy a hundred radar-proof F35 fighter planes from United States. Obviously it is an offensive  strategy against Malaysia air defense. Malaysia should in return safeguard itself against possible air attacks from Singapore. For years, Singapore has been building up its military, initially for defense, like training its able bodied males, and females, in National Service, and acquiring ground weapons needed for the defence of Singapore in case Malaysia attacks (who else ?). Then it had not much money to acquire weapons of offensive destruction. 

But now, with Singapore's wealth as high as those of developed countries in the West, the US made F-15 and F-18 fighters were not acquired to defend Singapore's air space but  to fight in someone else's airspace and where else but Malaysia's. And with the acquisition of the sophisticated F-35 fighters, with only a few countries having them - radar-proof and all -Singapore is possibly planning for a first strike against any country, with Malaysia being the first and possibly the only target. All Singapore needs to initiate a strike against Malaysia is an excuse, and there are many excuses ( water disputes with Malaysia for example) for Singapore to strike first.

And what has Malaysia got in order to defend itself against offensive strikes by Singapore. Singapore is not interested in conquering the whole  of Penisular Malaysia. All it needs is Johor or even parts of Johor. To be sure, its radar proof F-35 fighters, will knock off all Malaysia's facilities to stage a counter-strike. Malaysia's airbases in Subang, Kuantan, Butterworth and elsewhere are all within the F-35 striking radii. They would be a smouldering heap before Malaysians know what happen.

Given the above scenario, what can Malaysia do. First of all, are Malaysians prepared for war against Singapore. With a population of 27 millions against Singapore's 4.5 millions, statistically Malaysia has a bigger regular ground army than Singapore, or has it ? Are Malaysian ground forces better trained than that of Singapore ? Does Malaysia have better ground weapons than Singapore ? 

In all counts, Singapore is way ahead of Malaysia, never mind its  Air Force. Singapore's army is vastly superior in numbers than the Malaysian army since it includes all the able bodied males in Singapore who are trained as regular soldiers, Israeli style. Its hand and ground weapons are far more sophisticated than Malaysia's. All you need do is to see the recruiting advertisements by the Singapore military, displayed everywhere on the island. Malaysia's hand weapon is like the British Enfield rifle against Singapore's M-16 carbine. And another thing, Singapore has that Malaysia never has at all. Singapore has 30-40 % of Malaysia's population as potential fifth columnists in order to occupy the southern part of the Peninsula.

Updates: 26/07/2008: As I said before, Singapore is prepared for war with Malaysia. That's why it is proposing to buy radar-proof F35 fighters from the Americans. But it cannot simply attack Malaysia without good excuses. A good excuse is when Malaysia cuts off the water supply from Johore. Singapore will cry foul and starts becoming belligerant towards Malaysia before it starts  attacking. Now a new excuse has been conjured up by none other than Lee Kuan Yew and his son. Since Singapore won the Batu Puteh dispute, it has unilaterally declared an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) around the rocky outcrop known as Batu Puteh or Pedra Branca as Singapore prefers to call it. This means that it has acquired all the seas within 12 nautical mile radius of Batu Puteh so that no one can fish, pass through, sail on, without its expressive permission. Therefore, should a Malaysian (or an Indonesian) military vessel, say an MTB or a frigate, or even a submarine, passes through the EEZ, Singapore can shout to the world that it is an aggression or an act of war perpetrated by Malaysia. Singapore then justifies its attack on Malaysia as it is the Malaysians that draw first blood.

How then would Malaysia counter this not unlikely possibility of war with Singapore ?

to be continued here .....

FX or DX .....

I noticed that, for the past 3 weeks, my uncle was not his usual self. Most of the time, he was at home, surfing the internet and printing articles from some web pages. In between, he would be playing the Resistance:Fall of Man on the PS3 and, now and then, he would switch to playing Onimusha:Demon Siege or Resident Evil 4 on PS2. Sometimes, he would be in front of his Apple IMac, or in the kitchen reading the printed articles. At other times, he would be playing with his Nikon D70 camera, taking pictures and deleting them.

The printed articles that I saw had now occupied a full box file. When I chanced to peek in, the articles were all about cameras and lenses. That's what he had been up to in the past weeks. When I asked him why he printed so much data, he replied that he wanted to upgrade his present camera system to something more advanced  and therefore wished to get as much information on the new camera system as possible. When he bought his first digital SLR camera, a D70 Nikon, he said that it was done on an impulse and complaint that he should have checked in the Internet before buying the camera.

His choice was the Nikon D300 system and its array of lenses. He was aversed to the Canon system because all this while he had been a Nikon man. His previous cameras had been a Nikon Photomic FTN (stolen) , a Nikon F401x, and a Nikon F75 - all film cameras - and the digital SLR D70.

As the trend now is towards digital photography, he is therefore interested in acquiring good digital SLR cameras and Nikon has a reputation of producing such cameras. There are others of course like Canon, Sony, Pentax, Fujifilm, and so on who make good cameras also. But my uncle has  set his mind into buying the latest Nikon camera.

My uncle said to me that he's not sure now of what type of camera format he should use. He read about the FX format that came with the Nikon D3. But at a price of RM 16,600 plus, the camera seemed more than twice that of a Canon EOS 5D of the same FX format. His next consideration is the Nikon D300 with a DX format. The DX type camera is fitted with a 24x16 mm sensor while an FX type camera has a 36x24 mm sensor. According to what the articles say about the formats, the FX sensor captures better image quality that a DX sensor.

So because of this, my uncle scoured the Internet to get as much information on the Canon EOS 5D system and its array of lenses. Disregarding the fact that he was a nikonian himself, he was seriously considering to buy the Canon system especially when his friend had just acquired a Canon 40D camera system. His plan was derailed when on the 1st of July 2008, Nikon announced that it had just launched the Nikon D700. The Nikon D700 was a blend of the best features of the D3 and of the D300. Further, the D700 came fitted with an FX format sensor. This was a camera that would just suit my uncle's taste. 

The price of the Nikon D300 had dropped to RM 5,200 (a dealer in PJ) from its launch price of RM 6,388 in July 2007 and is set to go down further when the new D700 became available in Malaysia before year end or earlier. Nikon Malaysia and Nikon Singapore have not announced the selling price yet. Prices in USA, Britain and Euro have been announced, being the most expensive in Britain and the cheapest in US.

Now, my uncle is of two minds - whether to buy the Nikon D300 now at the current price of RM 5,200 or to wait for a few months until Nikon Malaysia announced the price of the D700. He said to me that if Nikon priced it at RM 12,000, he would forego the Nikon D700 and quickly decide to buy the D300 (which would further have gone down in price by then) and live with the DX format, after all the DX format was still as good as the FX format especially for the image quality within the central area of the sensor. If the DX700 is less than RM 10,000 or less than RM 9,000 (to be competitive with Canon EOS 5D at current price of less than RM 7,000) he would not hesitate to acquire it from any dealer in town.

Getting confused myself, I asked my uncle about the difference between an FX sensor and a DX sensor. My uncle explained the difference by way of an example although he admitted that he was still not 100 percent sure. If he shot a scene using an FX type camera and a 200mm lens set at, say, f/8 and infinity, the image he got would be exactly what a 35 mm film camera captures on a 36x24 mm sensor. Now, if he shot the same scene by using a DX format camera (placed as close to the FX camera as possible) and using a DX lens of the same focal length and at the same settings, the image captured would look exactly as if he had used a lens of 300 mm focal length on the FX camera. He can verify this by fitting the 300 mm lens onto to the FX camera and shoot the same scene again and compare the second and third scene, which are  identical in terms of scene area covered. The multiplier effect between the 2 formats is 1.5 - derived from focal length of 300 mm divided by the focal length of 200 mm. 

Still confused ? ....

Update:04/08/2008: At last Nikon has started marketing its new Nikon D700 FX camera. The other day when I was out with my uncle in Parkson Subang Jaya, one Nikon dealer offered the camera at a price of RM 9,688/=. When I asked for a discount, he was adamant that that was the best price he could sell to me, saying that the camera that he had on display was already booked. Not satisfied with the offer, I looked up Nikon Malaysia's website and true enough the price of the D700 was RM 9,688. When I looked up Shashinki, an online camera trader based in Perak, its selling price was RM 8,888/-. But just before my trip to Parkson, I did ask one dealer in PJ when would he have the camera available and what would his selling price be. He said that probably he would have it by the next week and that his price was RM 8,700/- or thereabout. There is one more shop that I have not been and that shop is in Pertama Complex KL. I would expect this shop to offer much better price than the others because when I bought the D300 from the PJ shop for RM 5,200/=, my friend (who bought his Canon EOS 40D here) swore that the same camera could be had for RM 4,800/- ! As for all the other shops in KL, such as those in Sq. Wang, Low Yat, Ampang Complex, their prices for the D300 are RM 200-400 more than offered by the shop in PJ, as also the prices of their lenses and accessories.

For all the increase, yet .....

It was announced today that Malaysia's IFR as at 30th June 2008 was RM 410.9 (USD 125.8) billion from a previous (usually a forthnight ago ) of RM 398.1 (USD 124.6) billion. This amount of reserve was able to sustain 10 months of import and was 5.1 times the amount of Malaysia's short term external debts. 

The IFR had increased appreciably from the my last blog entry on the reserve. The figures (for 30th April 2008) were RM 396.7 billion , 9.7 months, and 7.8 times respectively.

My first blog entry in March 2005 for Malaysia's IFR as at 15th Feb 2005 was RM 269.6 billion which could sustain 8.5 months of imports. In the 3 years and 4 months since then, the IFR had increased by RM 131.3 billion. How does this rate of increase fare over those of Asean countries, especially Singapore ?

For all the increase, yet the value of the Malaysian currency has weakened against almost all major currencies except the Rupiah.